Trump’s inflammatory words are part of a larger movement. At an especially contentious time in the abortion debate, opponents of the procedure have focused their attention on abortions that happen late in pregnancy. In some cases, they’re implying that laws allowing later abortions make it legal to kill a baby after birth (they do not).
Such claims began to proliferate in January, after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam made some confusing comments about an abortion bill in his state. Abortion opponents claimed his comments were an endorsement of infanticide. They argued that babies are sometimes born alive after failed abortions that happen late in pregnancy, and that they are then “left to die” or even executed by doctors.
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“The governor stated that he would even allow a newborn baby to come out into the world,” Trump told a crowd in El Paso, Texas, in February, “and wrap the baby, and make the baby comfortable, and then talk to the mother and talk to the father and then execute the baby.”
Abortion rights advocates and abortion providers have responded to rhetoric like this by saying that the case of a baby born after a failed abortion is so rare as to be essentially unheard of, and that if that did happen, doctors would care for the baby like any other patient. But the debate continues, so I reached out to a doctor who provides abortions for an in-depth explanation of what abortions late in pregnancy actually look like, and how the picture painted by Trump and others compares to reality.
Dr. Kristyn Brandi is a New Jersey OB-GYN with fellowship training in family planning, and a board member of Physicians for Reproductive Health. As a doctor, she delivers babies and cares for pregnant women, and also performs abortions. She told me that because of today’s legal requirements for abortion procedures, it’s essentially impossible for a baby to be born alive after a failed abortion, and that equating late abortion with infanticide is insulting to patients, many of whom are grieving the end of a much-wanted pregnancy.
Trump and others describe “late-term abortion” (which, Brandi explains, is not a medically accurate term) as something that can happen at 40 weeks’ gestation, even when a woman is in labor.